One seizure at a time.

I have a big test on Friday. Its on Psychiatry. All of it. I should be studying…but maybe you’ve noticed, I’m not studying right now. In fact, I’ve barely been studying at all. I also haven’t been talking to friends back home, I haven’t been laying on the beach. I have, however, started smoking again.

I’m depressed. (Though technically, I think this is more of an adjustment disorder with anxiety.)

The rash came back. Its bad enough that I wake up with blood under my fingernails, because I scratch in my sleep. Also because I have so many scabs across my chest, it hurts to do almost anything, including swimming.

Thankfully my neurologist, my allergist, my dermatologist, and I have come up with a solution. I’m having an allergy reaction to my Tegretol. Yup the one I’ve been on for 22 years. Sorry fourth year in SJB ER. I guess you were right.

The issue, one of the many many many issues, is that I’ve been on a shitload of meds (neurontin, keppra, lamictal, depakote, tranxene, zonegran, topomax, and clonopin, for those who like to keep track of these…oh yeah and magnesium sulfate) and the only one that has much of an effect is the one that my body has decided is the enemy. I’ll be switching to a tegretol like drug, Trileptal, which may or may not control my seizures and may or may not get rid of the rash….as soon as the fiance can get to the pharmacy and ship the drugs here that is.

In the meanwhile, I’ve found it nearly physically impossible to take the tegretol. I’ve gone down to 800 mg (from my normal 1200) because ingesting poison seems distasteful to me, somehow.

And yes, boys and girls, my seizures are back. They are long, they are often, and I go around in a postictal daze for much of my day.

(In case you’re interested though, you take some hard cheese, I like asiago, shred it, add some garlic powder, put a tablespoon or two on a cookie sheet, throw it into an over that’s been pre-heated to 350, wait 5 or 10 minutes, until the edges are brown, then take them out, shape them if you want, and eat with whatever you want. Easy peasy. And less than 1 net carb)

I had a professor in medical school who told me, in front of a group of folks, that there is no stigma attached to epilepsy. She then went on to tell me (in the same conversation, in front of the same people) that being a doctor was a high stress position and that she wouldn’t recommend it to me. This conversation took place at the end of my 2nd year.

I can’t say her name without a string of expletives following it.

The other day I told a friend that it was amazing the grades that she gets and even more amazing how down to earth she is about them. The conversation went on from there, but in the end she told me that I shouldn’t worry about my lack of A’s, since after all, I have seizures.

There’s some truth to all this. Seizures suck. They suck the energy out of you, and after a half dozen seizures, the idea of doing anything but sleeping seems impossible. Until I think of the stigma.

God, I hate the stigma. Worse than the stigma is pity. And worse than the pity is the admiration. I’m a middling human being, as far as my successes in life go. I’m not terribly hard working. Really. Its terrible, but I’d much rather socialize than study.I shoot high with my ambitions, but none seem worth giving up lazing about and strengthening connections with people I adore.

I treasure my languor. And so when it’s excused away as some by product of misfiring neurons, it really pisses me off. And when my half-assed attempts at life are described as splendid, I want to spit!